Social+Construction+and+AIDS+in+Night+Kites

__**YAL Text Summary:**__

//Night Kites// tells the story of the Rudd family from Erick's point of view. The reader watches as Erick learns that his older brother, Pete, is gay and is dying from AIDS. Erick and Pete's father, Mr. Rudd, handles the situation by pretending there isn't a problem for the sake of the family's reputation. Erick also begins dating Nikki and during this time, he has his first sexual encounter with her. Nicki has some family issues of her own: Nicki's mom, Annabel, believes herself to be the reincarnation of Edgar Allen Poe's character Annabel Lee; Nicki and her family live in The Kingdom by the Sea, a Poe-themed hotel; Nicki's mom runs a second-hand shop that is looked down upon by the people in the Rudd's social circle. This novel deals with social pressures, family pressures, reputation and social standing, the realities of AIDS, the mistreatment of those in the LGBT community, and death.

__**Chapter Summary:**__

In the chapter, Cultural Studies: //Social Construction and AIDS in Night Kites,// Moore introduces the scholar to the dimensions and methods of cultural studies and utilizes the Novel Night Kites as a reference point. For Moore and many others cultural studies is not easily defined as one thing but rather stands as an umbrella theory encompassing a means to read a text through multiple theories that blur boundaries. It asks the reader to approach a work using multiple texts, economics, social constructs, political philosophy and intertextual relationships to create meaning from within and beyond the text. When we read a text through the eyes of cultural theory we become fluid; the text is alive historically all the way through to the present. Two ways to approach cultural studies is through the text and the historical events occurring during the text's setting as reference and ideology framing points.

//Night Kites,// by M.E. Kerr is a novel that affords Moore a depth of cultural studies examples. It provides a study into class through the differences in the Rudd's social standing, and the Marr's as well as the secrets of the old money matriarchs as there fortunes fade. Social construction is another lens to view the novel through focusing on the importance of the American Dream. What does this construct, i.e. dream mean in the context of power trying to hold onto its self-importance and followed closely with the deconstructionist blurring of a boundary as Mr. Rudd's carefully constructed persona of himself and family begin to crumble through Peter's homosexuality and dying moments with AIDS. Considering outside source material that can be read within and without the texts are various intertextual references to popular music i.e. Madonna and Bruce Springsteen. Popular television in the form of the Waltons and Family as well as Classical lit which is folded into the text in the form of Poe's Annabelle Lee which serves double duty as the Marr's Hotel and bar as well as Mrs. Marr's namesake. In using a cultural studies lens all of these points can be studied in conjunction with the text and read through the text for greater depth of meaning.

Lastly Moore directs us to consider outside textual reference to construct a meaning that goes beyond the text. This can be either of historical significance to the actual time of the work or can be read through various other lenses that are contemporarily relevant or significant in a cultural context such as religious, social, or gender.

__**Take-A-ways:**__

1. The fluidity and open ended means of approaching a text allow for a deeper reading, perhaps a more relevant reading of the text. This breadth of scope is both thrilling and frightening. Thrilling because it provides such a global view, and inter connected way of seeing the world, for nothing happens in a vacuum. However, this also skates on the realm of controlling a classroom or what have you, into not assuming that any idea one ones to put forth is valid.

2. As media grows and we approach literacy through so many different mediums in our current environment it would behoove us to consider this way of approaching literacy studies as an effective tool in connecting what we consume and how we consume it as regards lit.